Happy Anniversary

This passed Monday was exactly one year since I left Dick and the divorce papers were filed a year ago yesterday. I never thought it would take this long to get this close and still have nothing show for it. Well, that's not entirely true...I have so much more debt now, than when I started! Divorce is nothing if not expensive. The hope is that when all is said and done, it will be worth the ridiculous expense, and since Dick had been hiding money during the course of our marriage, I should make out just fine. Have I mentioned the "money hiding" before now? I don't think so. Well, apparently "Mr. Crying Poor Mouth" never had anything to be crying about! I knew that we could live comfortably and that he made a decent salary. What I didn't know was that he had been squirreling away money from the very beginning. I was aware of some accounts that my name was not on, but I didn't think anything of it because he told me they were for retirement, and they had to do with work. I believed him. Why wouldn't I? I had no reason not to. Things are different now. Now I wouldn't believe him if he told me water was wet. But back then I trusted him with my life, so I never questioned anything that had to do with money. I figured he was earning it, he had every right to do whatever he thought best with it. As long as we were together I would be taken care of. Since we were going to be together for ever, I never gave it a second thought.
During the course of this blog I have basically brought you from the day I left Dick, up to the day I confronted him about his affair, with a little skipping around into our past for good measure. Its time once again to skip back, first we must visit the early days of our marriage, then we will go to the summer of 2008. Right after our wedding, I closed my personal checking account and with our gift money we opened a joint checking account. So far, so good. But, the only thing that ever got put into that joint account was the initial deposit and my paycheck. In the beginning I was paying certain household bills, telephone, cable, doing the food shopping and paying for any other household items as needed. Dick would pay the larger bills like the mortgage, gas/electric, insurance, etc. Dick also had his own personal checking account before we got married. Ten years later, he still had the same account...without me on it. I didn't want to accuse him of doing something wrong, because if you remember, I trusted him, so I approached it saying "What if something were to happen to you and you were unable to write a check or access the account? We wouldn't be able to pay bills because I can't write a check on that account." It worked, because the next day he came home with a signature card for me sign. Finally we had all "our" money in joint accounts...or so I thought. What he didn't tell me was that he also had a savings account at the same bank where he kept the big money. When did I find this out? Picture this...it's July 2008, and I am home recovering from my hysterectomy. I had started my fact finding tour with the discovery of where Dick hid the key to the file cabinet. Due to my lack of energy that day I had to cut my snooping short. I had plenty of time in the days to come to go back to the infamous file cabinet, which I did, many times. What I found was not one, but two bank accounts that my name was not on. One of them held particular interest to me because I noticed that the statements were mailed to his work address. Upon closer examination I realized that this was just a plain old savings account. Nothing special like a CD or Money Market...just a passbook savings. I looked some more and found the old passbook...same account number. Original deposit date 1980! This account had tens of thousands of dollars in it. The other one had over a hundred thousand. I was a bit shocked, to say the least. I did believe that he was hoarding it for retirement, but why be so secretive about it? Then I came across a most interesting piece of paper. It was all folded up and stuffed in between two file folders. It was a receipt...from a lawyer...a divorce lawyer. "What the hell?" I thought out loud, "That little bastard has looked into divorce!" The date on the receipt coincided with when I started to noticed Dick acting differently. It was also the same time the cell phone calls between him and Charlot had first showed up. I surmised that he went for a consultation with a divorce attorney to get an idea of what he was in for if he were to get divorced. When he found out that he stood to lose half of what he considered to be "his" money he figured it was worth putting up with me and staying married. I have to tell you that even though I was considering divorce, the fact that he had thought about it really bothered me. I was incensed! How dare he! He obviously didn't know how good he had it. Now I was really fired up. I took every folder that contained any financial information out of that file cabinet, scanned them and loaded them onto a flash drive, which kept hidden in my purse. It was a good thing I did that because soon after I outed him and Charlot, money began to slowly disappear. He made withdrawals of ten to twenty thousand at a time over a period of three months. Both of those accounts that were only in his name where closed out by the end of December 2008. During what is called "discovery" in the divorce process both parties have to submit financial statements. These list all of you assets, debt, income, and bank accounts that you have had for the past three years. Well, guess what was not listed on Dick's financials? That's correct...those two accounts. Can you say "Caught ya!!!" Since my lawyer had all the information that I had scanned we knew that Dick was probably hiding more than what I was already aware of. This brought up the burning question of where did the money from those two accounts go? That is another very interesting story which really needs its very own post. So, once again I will leave you hanging and end this post with a little song.

Everybody join in if you know the tune to the Anniversary song!


Happy Anniversary...happy anniversary....happy anniversary...haaap-py a-ni-ver-sa-ry! I am happy 'cause I just had my first anniversary. I left Dick this time last year and all I want to do is sing and cheeeerrr!!! Happy anniversary...happy anniversary...happy anniversary...haaap-py a-ni-ver-sa-ry!